In early May, Minneapolis School District representatives said a recent budget correction resulted in a significant windfall. Edison High School will reinstate some support positions that were cut in response to the school’s previous budget, which was made prior to this discovery. (Provided)
Edison High School will add back four support positions next year after the Minneapolis Public Schools fixed coding errors in its special education program and brought more money into the system.
The school has six Educational Support Personnel (ESPs) this year. That number had been cut to two to accommodate the district’s anticipated $50 million shortfall in its 2026-27 budget.
Three of those four ESP positions will be restored. At a press conference, Principal Eryn Warne said, “It has been a great relief to us.”
In addition, the school also had two student advocates working with Latino and East African students, often new to the country, and one was cut. That position will now be added back.
The Minneapolis School District, the third largest in the state, hired outside help in the past two years to address a problem in coding special education funds. That coding determined how much money the district would receive back from the state for special education programming.
On May 8, the district held a press conference to talk about the correction which resulted in a $10.7 million boon to the district’s finances this year and $10.8 million windfall this coming school year. The district deficit has been cut to under $40 million freeing up money to restore some positions that were cut.
The administration was asked at the press conference how long the problem had been going on, and Dr. Liz Keenan, who was hired last year as Associate Superintendent of Special Education, said the coding problem went back to at least 2022-23 and cost the district “tens of millions of dollars.”
In December, the district put its top three financial people on administrative leave and all three have now left the district. Citing employee confidentiality, the district has never given a reason for the layoffs.
Since then, the district finances have been done by the Center for Effective School Operations, a private vendor. The company helped the district straighten out its coding problems.
The district is also working its way through another financial problem. The Star Tribune reported that the district has been assessed $5.3 million in IRS penalties and has withheld nearly $3 million in payments to a trust fund covering employee health insurance costs. No explanation has been given.
Overall, the $10.8 million for next year will enable the district to hire back 107 full-time equivalent positions that had been slated for cutting. Superintendent Lisa-Sayles Adams said at the press conference that while the new funding is good for the schools, education is chronically underfunded in Minnesota.
Among the areas that have been cut, the district reduced the number of student counselors, school librarians, social workers and adult education teachers.
At Edison, the Northeaster was unable to determine how the additional funds for next year will affect those positions, and school officials did not respond.
Warne said adding back the ESP positions will be important. “These are the people who greet the students in the morning and get them on the buses in the afternoon. They provide hallway monitoring and cafeteria monitoring.
“An ESP is someone a student can talk to when they’re feeling down. They can contact parents when there’s a behavioral problem.”
The press conference drew nearly all the major press in the Twin Cities, but the district only allowed for four questions.
In an email interview, Abdul Abdi, Minneapolis School Board member representing Northeast, and chair of the board’s Finance Committee, responded to a request from the Northeaster, writing, “Edison was able to reinstate most of the positions that had previously been impacted. Decisions regarding staffing restorations were largely made at the school level, allowing school leaders to prioritize based on their local needs and student supports.”
Webster Elementary and Las Estrellas Dual Language School are located in Northeast, and both are considered “racially identifiable” by the state, but Abdi did not have any figures on cuts or restorations at those schools. School officials had said that racially indentifiable schools would have priority in funding.
“At the elementary level, the district invested a significant portion of this year’s budget into reducing class sizes, so elementary schools generally should not have experienced the same level of reductions,” Abdi said.
The District has a website for the budget: www.budget.mspschools.org. But the site does not list budget figures for last year, making it difficult to determine what has been cut or retained at a specific school.
The revised budget will now go to the Minneapolis School Board on May 12 for a first reading. The budget must be approved in June.